Alert! Incoming! Review

By , on March 3, 2010

Alert! Incoming!
Download on the AppStore
2 out of 5

PROS

  • Varied weapon power-ups.

CONS

  • Disincentive to use different weapons due to timeliness.
  • No immersive audio.
  • Poor controls for firing accuracy.

VERDICT

Alert! Incoming! would need to make some fundamental gameplay changes for it to be fun enough to encourage play.


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Alert! Incoming! is a space shoot em up whereby the player takes on the role of a large defence laser that must destroy incoming enemies before they reach your shields and destroy your ship.

With no instructions or tutorials, you must learn the controls on your own which involve holding your finger and sliding it across the arrows on the bottom to aim your laser. To change weapons, you tap on the weapon icon to choose which defence weapon you wish to use. However, changing weapons has a delay which can be extremely hazardous with swarms of enemies flying at you and when you run out of ammo, it automatically changes back, again taking away from your all important resource of time.

Visually, the game uses very basic 2D objects to represent your ship and your enemies. There is no soundtrack and very basic sound effects for your weapons. The game features only one mode of survival in which you must defend against attacks for as long as your shields hold.

The only way to gain power-ups is to avoid shooting them, which, considering you can't aim without firing, becomes very frustrating. Overall, with confusing power ups and a disincentive to use different weapons, there wasn't really any enjoyment gained from playing this game.

Screenshots

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